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I used to own a Norton 650 motorbike. It was made long before I was born and it was a beautiful piece of machinery. It was superbly balanced, so that although it was a heavy machine it felt light to the rider. It went where you leaned; you only had to give it a hint, like a horse that knows and likes you. And it had power to spare.

I was working as a psychiatric nurse. It was a security hospital far out in the country. I mostly did night shifts, because I’m a night owl and I didn’t mind odd sleep patterns as much as most people. The patients were mostly asleep at night, with some spectacular exceptions, so I could usually get some reading or writing done.

I went to a party one Friday night. It was a good party, and I lost track of time. So when I looked at my watch I found it was 10.35PM. That meant I had less than half an hour to get my uniform on and get to the ward. I had my uniform in a backpack, and I decided to get changed at the ward once I’d arrived. That was a lucky decision. The other lucky thing was that I put on a long coat made of camel hair, that my grandfather had worn in the second world war. He was in desert fighting, where the nights seemed as cold as the surface of the moon.

But by the time I had my foot on the kickstart I had less than twenty minutes to get to the ward, and it was a half hour ride. It was a pitch black night, cloudy, moonless and starless.

I was on a stretch of gravel road when I saw a packing case on the road ahead of me, that must have fallen off the back of someone’s truck. I swerved to go round it, but I didn’t have enough time. The front tyre missed the box but hit a large stone, and suddenly the bike was sliding along the ground on one footpeg and one handle bar, spinning but still heading in the general direction of work. But I was in the air, having gone over the handlebars when the bike went down. I was flying a bit less than a metre above the ground, at the speed that the bike had been going.

I had what seemed like a long time in the air, long enough to experience every microsecond and to wonder, in an abstract way – since I couldn’t do anything about it – what I was going to hit, and how badly whatever I hit would break me. There were trees, and a ditch.

I feel like that now. I’ve left the bike, I’ve done the things I can do to try to save us. I don’t know if they’re enough, but more would make things worse. And for now there’s nothing more that I can do except to fly and hope that I’ll be ok when I hit whatever it is that I hit.

Life’s on hold. Her daughter is sick, and at home, so my agenda for today is off.

I’d thought that a well belted backside, and then lots of fucking, would be good for her. And giving her those things would be good for me. It’d remind her of how we, together, make her happy. Also, it would make her happy. Right now. I know she’s feeling terrible at the moment, nearly as lost as I am.

Our relationship isn’t just about pleasure and sex, but those things are important. They’re basics, and basics are good. (When they’re good, that is, and in our case, they are.)

Anyway, I’m going over now. I’m going to help build a model bear. A grizzlie, with a mat for hair and I don’t know what the teeth will be made of. Well, that’s something, though I can’t help feeling that it would be better to be sexy, right now, than helpful.

Ah well, we’ll see.

I‘d hoped I’d never feel like this again in my life, but you never get love or life risk-free. C’est la fucking vie.

My girl has told me she loves someone else. My heart hurts, and my world has fallen in. I’m bewildered and sad. I want it not to be true. I have no idea what to do.

Update:

Well, I’m not going to give up. I don’t have that first fresh rush of lust on my side. But I know that I’ve been good to her and good for her. I have love on my side, and authority. Though if a woman wants to leave her Dom, then of course she can: his authority stops when consent stops. But I have something: I’ve always used my power and my best judgment for her good, so she will listen and consider what I say.

On the other hand, though I respect her utterly, I do think my judgment is better than hers. And maybe it’s better than hers at the moment precisely because she’s swept up in the excitement of meeting a new, sexy person. Her happiness comes first, before mine, but at least I won’t assume that making the great sacrifice and going off nobly is the best thing for her happiness.

I think that her best happiness is with me. That happens to coincide a little too well with what is best for my happiness. But that in itself doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We should both be happy.

There’s a survey coming out soon. A huge random sample of Australians – about 20,000 people – have been asked quite detailed questions about their sexual behaviour and attitudes. It’s the most comprehensive survey of its kind in the world, and it’s impeccable in both its sampling and its survey technique.

Two of the questions were about bdsm, but the data for those questions is still being analysed. I do know that there’s been a slight increase in the number of people who say they’ve taken part in bdsm activity in the last year, and a larger increase in the number of people who taken part in role-playing games like teacher/naughty schoolgirl, which typically involve a bit of mild bondage and spanking.

What really interests me is that for the first time they’ve asked whether people usually take a dominant-top role or a submissive-bottom role, or if they just switch without a favourite. That was my idea. I’m interested in what proportion of doms and subs there are, for both men and women. I’ve heard a ton of guessing and theorising about this, but I’d like to know what the real figures are.

The previous survey found that there was no difference in health, success and childhood experiences between people who do bdsm and people who don’t. We’re all fine, thanks. But it’s possible that, say, submissives are slightly less healthy than average, while dominants are slightly healthier than average, and that’s how we came out as average in the last survey.

Is it true that there are more submissives than dominants? Are dominants or submissives more healthy and successful in everyday life, or is there no difference? Well, we’ll know in a few months, and you’ll probably be able to read it here first, in this shonky blog that no-one reads.

Young women, fucking and masturbation

For now I’m puzzling over a different result, which is that although about 76% of young women aged 16 to 20 have had sex, only about 27% of them have ever masturbated. Three times as many young women have had sex than have ever wanked.

That seems incredible to me, but it’s consistent with other surveys – in fact it’s a slightincrease on the similar survey ten years earlier – so it’s bound to be true.

But it’s only the young women aged 16 to 20 who don’t masturbate much. By the time they’re over 30 most women do masturbate, and the numbers go up as women get older. Women over 30 are never quite as busy wanking as the men their age, but they’re wanking two or three times as much as their younger selves.

So – given that masturbation is pleasant, harmless, and sometimes the only thing you can do if you want to get any sleep – why on earth is it that most young women don’t masturbate, even though they’re having sex?

You could argue that it’s because girls are taught that masturbation is shameful, and so they don’t do it, or they do masturbate but they pretend that they don’t. I don’t think that’s likely to be the explanation. Remember that three out of four of them have had sex, and they had no trouble telling that to a researcher. If they’re not wanking because of conservative rules about sex, those rules should also be stopping them from having sex. So that’s not what’s happening.

My theory is this. Both men’s and women’s sexual responses are partly hard-wired, sure, but a lot of it in both sexes is learned.

Male sexual response is easier to learn. Cocks and their sexual responses are blatantly visible. Young men know when they have an erection, and to some extent there’s a feedback cycle based on that knowledge. “My cock is stiff.” –> “I am turned on.” –> “Whoa! My cock just get harder.” –> “I must be really turned on.” And so on.

Female sexual response is less obvious, and it’s more difficult for young women to know when they’re aroused.

There are experiments that found that women who are in fact having measurable physiological responses (vaginal wetness, skin tension, etc) in response to sexual images will deny being aroused. I don’t think they’re lying, or shy, or that they disapprove of the sexual images and their response. It’s that the physiological changes in women are less visible, and it’s easier to be unaware of them even while experiencing them.

So young women can be aroused without knowing it. So there’s less of a “trigger” to relieve the arousal through masturbation.

The other thing is that in our culture we spend more time and money showing images of what a sexually inviting, fuckable woman looks like, naked or not wearing much. We don’t show naked young men, aroused or sexually receptive, nearly as often. In our culture it’s easy to learn what a sexy woman looks like, and learn your own response to that, and somewhat harder to learn what a sexy man looks like, and find out what appeals to you about them.

By “sexy man” I’m talking about the kind of image, with penises and shadows, and strength or surrender, that makes (some) women say “unff”. I mean images that are actually hot, as opposed to “nice” like George Clooney’s charmingly crinkly eyes.

So a lot of advertising, for example, looks like a light version of the porn aimed at straight men or lesbians. (There are differences between porn made for het men and porn made for lesbians, but also a fair amount of overlap.) But not many advertising images of men look much like gay porn.

This may be one reason why there are far more women, especially young women, who respond sexually to both men and women, than there are men who respond sexually to other men. Both sexes are taught to desire women.

That means, in the case of young women, that the erotic images they see have less connection with the person they’re most likely to have their first sexual experiences with, who in most cases is going to be a young man.

So young men find it easier to know when they’re horny, and they are given a menu of things to like about women’s bodies and about sex. Young women don’t have so much information, from their own bodies, or about sex with young men in it.

So young women learn the things that really, personally, get them hot through their own experience, and not so much from the culture. So young women have sex first, and start masturbating later, while young men are already wanking before they’ve had any sexual experience with another person.

So that’s my theory. It boils down to: sexual power comes from knowledge. Which is one more way of saying: knowledge is power.

When people tell me stories about sex in the cubicles of some nightclub or department store or whatever it might be, I can see that they liked the mischief of it, and the sense of being carried away by lust, and I can relate to that. But I’ve had times when I’ve been overcome by lust, and felt the absolute need to act on it immediately, and that still hasn’t led me to take my girl by the hand and drag her past the Gentlemen sign at the local bar.

It’s useful to know a few places that aren’t “my place, your place or the conveniences at Macy’s”. I tend to explore new cities, when I first arrive, looking at spaces from an unusual perspective.

For example, there’s a little roof garden in one of the London universities that you can get to by climbing up four flights of stone steps and then hopping over the crenellations. It’s a pretty and clean little place, with a great view over London though London can’t see you, and it’s got a little grass area that’s … comfortable. I don’t live in London any more, but I still smile whenever I’m visiting and I happen to walk past that building.

But no matter how keen I was, I don’t think I’d ever want to fuck in a public toilet. They’re just not romantic. They have that horrible light that’s supposed to stop junkies from being able to see their veins, which doesn’t make anyone look their best, they smell bad, and they’re all hard and uncomfortable surfaces. And while you have privacy of a sort if you keep the cubicle door closed, it’s not real privacy.

I’d rather have a stand-up up against a door-way or in a park, I think, than go and hide in the toilets.

Anyway, that’s today’s confession of sexual weirdness. I’ve never done anything sexual in a toilet, and I’m pretty sure I never will.

Meta: I’m coming up to another difficult part of the Probation Officer story, and I’m going to take a short break from it.

There’ll be a few one-off posts on random topics before I get back to the main thread.

I was talking to another woman at that party I mentioned. She was the sort of cute lesbian that that they put on television, with an expensive short blonde razor-cut and skinniness worn as a fashion statement.

I’ve forgotten how the subject came up – Veuve Clicquot probably had something to do with it, since there was a lot of it about – but she was telling me about being thrown out of a lesbian nightclub for having sex with some girl she’d just met, in the toilet cubicles. She finished by shouting out the title of this very post, waving one charm-braceletted arm in the air.

She was taking the piss out of herself, but she meant it, too.

I mostly agree with anything a pretty woman says under those circumstances. And some stories about things that women I know – bi girls rather than lesbians, mostly – have got up to in lesbian nightclubs would suggest that the club managers don’t usually get all fussy about fucking in the toilet cubicles.

I was at a party last night, where I talked to a woman who’s just led one of the world’s largest surveys on sexual behaviour and attitudes. The results are still being analysed, including the results on some questions about bdsm that I really want to know the answers to. (I had some input into the questions, so of course I’m interested.)

I’m not giving any other information at this stage because the findings haven’t been published yet. The first official release of this data has to be in … well, it shouldn’t be in this dodgy blog.

But of the findings that are available so far, the one that struck me was that only about 27% of women in the 16 to 20 age bracket have ever masturbated.

But about three quarters of them have had sex.

About three times as many young women have had sex as have ever wanked.

Jock was back in his office when I got back. With the door shut. I figured he was intending to make me sweat. It took a while to understand that he wasn’t going to talk to me at all that day. He wasn’t hiding. Jock doesn’t hide. But he had nothing to say to me.

I called Sa’afia. She was pleased with my news about Ana, but not pleased, separate from that, to hear from me. No, her mother was back. And yes, that’s right, she’d be staying with Mum tonight. I called her my blossom possum, and when that got no reaction I tried peril squirrel, then combat wombat. Sa’afia liked rhyming compliments, or at least she got them. But I didn’t get a laugh or an endearment back.

I wasn’t her little man, just then. I had no idea what she meant by that particular endearment, but I missed being it.

I lurched through the rest of that conversation, without burning any bridges. I felt relieved by the time I’d steered to the end and it was time to hang up, and immensely worried about that feeling of relief. What the hell was going on?

The rest of the day I spent dealing with clients I haven’t mentioned here before, and probably won’t mention again. A guy called France, for example, had got drunk and tried to hold up a paint shop with an ancient shotgun that might, or might not, have gone off if he’d actually pulled the trigger. Or it could have gone off and killed someone if he’d just bumped it. Or it’d have blown up and killed him. He was lucky that no-one had pushed the issue one way or the other. He was lucky, also, that when he’d collected his $80 and run out of the shop, straight into a police floodlight, he’d laid down when they’d told him to.

I’d interviewed him and I knew enough about why it had happened: metamphetamine, greed, anger and stupidity, mostly, though I could have written about family trouble, homelessness, his being bullied and raped, and I’d have been telling the truth when I said those things too. But he was going to get five years and serve three, no matter what I said. I had his and two other pre-sentencing reports to write.

Jane Siebel got Ana to tell Maynard about Greg Curnow’s harassment, leading up the rape threat and his planting drugs in her room.

Ana took a long deep breath, and began to speak. She spoke about being afraid, but she let her anger show. She told the story coldly, giving dates and locations, when she could, and mentioning when there were witnesses who’d be prepared to back her up. She kept the emotion reined in. It wasn’t hidden but it was background. It’s odd that people are most credible when they fake their emotional state. Ana was acting much calmer and colder than she was, or any reasonable person would be under the circumstances, and that worked. I was surprised she knew to do that. I was proud of her.

Maynard listened to her story once, and then he took her through it again, this time being aggressively skeptical, interrupting her and trying to push her into contradicting herself. This isn’t how a male police official is supposed to be dealing with a young woman who was, among other things, reporting a sexual crime. I wasn’t happy with him but Jane didn’t intervene. So I followed her judgment and kept quiet.

I had warned Ana that Maynard’d be likely to do something like that, and explained why: it wouldn’t mean he disbelieved her or wanted her to go away. He’d be making a quick judgment on whether he had a credible complainant he could call on in Court if Curnow didn’t resign quietly.

Ana kept her answers simple and she stayed consistent. He couldn’t get a contradiction or an angry retort out of her. I was already on her side, but I was pretty sure I’d have been won over if that was the first time I’d heard the story. When Maynard said, “huh” and leaned back in his chair I could see that Ana was physically shaky, but her story hadn’t been shaken at all. We sat in silence for a few seconds. I had an odd feeling that Maynard wanted a cigarette.

Jane took over then, and we began the dealing that meant Curnow wouldn’t be back in a uniform or getting paid, before he was discharged from the LAPD.

All this only took half an hour, though it seemed as if we’d covered a lot of ground and been in that room for much longer. Maynard switched his phone back on and stood up. He nodded at Jane, and left. He was clearly going to have to do something that would make Jane and I happy, so he might as well be rude about it.

Once he’d gone Jane leaned over and gave Ana a hug. She’d have her under for wing for a few hours, while they got a court order saying that Curnow had to stay away.

Jock made no comment. He said I’d see him at the office, later. Which meant he wasn’t setting up a meeting. Then he and I both drove to the Probation Service. I had no idea what mood I’d find him in when we got there.

Ana and I arrived at the Community Law Centre together. I didn’t want to carry out any of the little subterfuges that couples use if they’re fucking and they want to pretend that they aren’t. I could’ve dropped Ana off, out of sight but in easy walking distance of the Centre, and waited ten minutes before trying to find a parking place for myself. No-one would ever guess that we’d both come from my place!

So I parked as close to the centre as I could and we walked together from there.

It’d be a bad idea to do anything that looked as though we had anything to hide. Nothing sexual had happened, except for Ana’s flashing me from my couch. I could hardly help that, and anyway I assumed that on her side that had mostly been mischief rather than sex. I hadn’t forgotten the glimpse of her body, but I couldn’t help that either. At least I hadn’t acted on anything I’d felt.

So we walked in, facing an ironical smile from Commissioner Maynard, and an accusing glare from Jock. Well, if either of them of them made an issue of it, Sa’afia could tell them who’d been in my bed. And then they could explain why I’d had to defend my client against a system that was supposed to protect her.

So Jane sat Ana down and let the men do glares and shoulders at each other for a while, since she thought it was hilarious. Then she started the meeting.

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